Comments on: German rights holders sue YouTube in escalating royalty fight

By: L Bass

L Bass — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:03:20 +0000

It has always amazed me that something can easily be obtained from the public airways, via TV, radio, or whatever… can then be sold to me. If I understand the common artist/label split… the label cleans the artist’s clock on the actual product sales. The artist takes the largest profit from the tour and memorabilia sales.
Question: Has anybody asked the Korean artist that became an overnight sensation due to his “youTube” sensation Oppan Gangnam Style? Reportedly to be raking in excess of 10 million USD on his one hit, I agree YouTube has really ripped him off! How many other potential breakthrough artists will be stifled if the recording studios have their way? Screw Germany’s GEMA, you tube will live with out their patronage. And all of the artists that they are trying to milk higher prices for, can live with less revenue.

By: Mike Page

Mike Page — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:11:46 +0000

Hmmmm, not to sure about that Ted. Most singers/song writers only earn a portion of their income through royalty’s, and most through TV/Radio appearances and gigs. But if I interpret all this with GEMA correctly, then GEMA earns over 60%, I think that is what I read in a German newspaper the ‘Bild’ a year or so back, of the takings, just to feed and keep going the bloated melon head. A good friend of mine is such a singer/songwriter for the electronic-house scene, and he is not happy with GEMA. If he wants to put HIS music on HIS homepage, then he has to pay GEMA. The copyright laws are made for everyone, they are not just made for one side of the world, so that they can smack the other side as and when they wish. What Ted was talking about was the old trading laws of the 30′s, 40′s and 50′s. You write a tune and publish it through a record company, and then sell it in form of a records from a record shop. This is not the case now, you might want to publish your song to get famous and to have as many gigs as possible. Most of the CD’s, at least in the EU, have a anti-copy thing on them so even if you wanted to put your newly purchased CD onto your usb stick to play in your car, you cant. Under EU copyright laws we are not allowed to even look at this software on the CD. So where does that leave me, Mr normal? Well, all I want to do is to listen to the music that was played in a club I goto, and may I add not even put onto CD. Yes, you have all got it right, I look at youtube, and if I live in Germany I cannot, because of GEMA! I think personally, youtube should pull out of Germany and run the German side of the business from the USA, at least they have more balls than the rest of the world to deal with things like this. I think then Google should sue the GEMA for loss in revenue over the last 4-5 years, that will get things moving, at least. Yes of course youtube should pay for the rights, but 0.375 Cents per click is just stupid, and may I add typical German.

Mike in Germany

By: joe

joe — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:49:52 +0000

to make it simple, GEMA doesn’t allow my music to be played through my youtube channel in germany if i do not pay GEMA. :)

who’s da pimp?

By: Ted in Atlanta

Ted in Atlanta — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:00:50 +0000

I think this all boils down to people started out in an unregulated free-for-all with the last 15 years of technology breaking all the established rights of intellectual property, with a bunch of freeloaders. Either the system must monetize the creators or the creating – and either way the freeloading – will end. Yes MTV and radio played songs, but clearly on-demand repeated plays and streaming have eliminated the eventual PURCHASE part of that old promo equation. The internet “content distributors” are all in the obvious and complete wrong, and when the laws and policing again protect the rights of the creators and not the people “used to getting everything in a free and open social framework, don’t harsh my free, dude!” then we can all go back to business as usual. Pay for what you want, as the creator / seller of what you want demands, or do not obtain what you want. That’s simple.

By: Bing

Bing — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 22:22:47 +0000

here’s another good article about it
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130113/21374021652/gema-vs-youtube-hits-three-year-mark-as-rate-negotiations-fall-through-again.shtml

By: Bing

Bing — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 22:09:50 +0000

lets not actually forget the fact, that the music videos are in fact promotion videos.
and used to be in the old days shown on mtv, to encorage people to then buy the music.
The record companies, and the bands are hoping people see a video and then go and buy the music. A lot of artists and record companies, have already complained about gema’s stupidly heavy handed approach to the whole business, as its basically loosing them customers in germany.
You dont / cant hear the music, you obviously then dont buy it

By: GCC

GCC — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:27:38 +0000

Some good comments here [being in the U.S., such things are unfortunately uncommon here]. It may be helpful to distill this matter down to its simplest priciples. Intellectual property is still “property.” This is not a matter of opinion, but law—and as such, the owner (or his legal representative) is entitled to choose what is done with his property.

Consequently, YT is not in a position (legally) to unilaterally decide to use others’ property and under what terms. Use absent permission is copyright infringement, it’s as simple as that.

Theoretically, in a capitalist society the market is supposed to arrive at a fair arrangement for all concerned parties. The problem is that there has been a precedent of “take first, negotiate later.” I think most of us can see the flaw in that approach. Just because you create the technological ability to do something, it doesn’t give you the right.

To me, this is the flaw with most of these digital companies that build their businesses around others’ property. If your business model can’t survive paying fair market value, then, regrettably, your business is not viable—even if it’s a great idea. [There is obviously more to say, but it’s getting late and, admittedly, I’m becoming lazy…]

By: tetracycloide

tetracycloide — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:59:41 +0000

The only entity that could verify ‘the ownership and copyright situation’ is a court. Why? Because there are affirmative defenses to infringement. It’s not a hosting services place to make determinations that are fundamentally between uploaders and rights-holders. You try to characterize the way copyright enforcement has ALWAYS worked, that it’s on rights-holders every time, as if that’s something YouTube does differently. It isn’t. Copyright has always required active enforcement by the rights-holder.

By: tetracycloide

tetracycloide — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:53:06 +0000

“and the fact that Google is making fat profits above Wall Street expectations while music companies and publishers are struggling shows that currently the balance is not quite right”

Why? You can’t just declare this ‘not quite right’ a priori as if the two are inextricably linked and that there’s some fundamental reason why both should be successful.

By: Ben Norwood

Ben Norwood — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:07:21 +0000

I wonder what arrangements YouTube has with other publishers and collection societies around the world? For fairly obvious reasons, they’d be very reluctant to pay any individual society significantly more than the others, as that would set a precedent for increasing the amount they pay all the other societies. Naturally, of course, these agreements are probably considered commercially sensitive by both sides, so there’s no easy way for a society to find out if they’re being offered the same amount as everyone else, or if they’re being paid significantly less.

As for “posting every other video without verifying the ownership and copyright situation first”, given the sheer volume of videos posted to YouTube, that would be completely unfeasible. What they do have, however, is ContentID – an automated system that aims to match music samples with those held in a database (so enabling flagging even if someone uploads a cover of the track in a different key on a different instrument with a different accompaniment and in a different tempo). It’s up to each society to determine what happens with each match – whether the videos are allowed as is, with artist / track info, with ads, or the infamous “This contains content from X, who have blocked it on copyright grounds” or “This video is not available in your country” messages.

However, I suppose it’s harder to do this for “official” videos by the label / artist. Of course, this isn’t the first dispute YouTube have had with record labels – IIRC they had a big one a few years ago with WMG…